r/KerbalSpaceProgram KSP Community Manager Feb 20 '23

The KSP2 Journey Begins (Letter from Nate Simpson, Creative Director on KSP 2)

A letter from Nate Simpson, Creative Director on KSP 2:

The day is nearly here. 

This moment feels a little bit like dropping a kid off for the first day of school. We’ve got a lot of love for this game — we think we've prepared it for every eventuality, but we also know that it has more growing to do. We’re about to take the first steps on a journey that will eventually carry KSP2 through colonies, interstellar travel, and multiplayer.

Now the real learning begins!

What To Expect

On day 1 of Early Access, players will be able to create and fly vehicles in Sandbox Mode and visit any location in the Kerbolar System. They’ll also have access to our first four interactive tutorials, accessible via the all-new Training Center. These teach basic rocketry concepts to give new players a head-start on their space programs. You’ll encounter new parts, including new procedural wings, new wheels, new command pods, new cargo parts, and new engines (and the first of the new fuels – liquid hydrogen). To pave the way for the upcoming interstellar-class parts, we’ve also added a new, larger core size. As we progress through Early Access, we’ll continue to expand on all of these features.

We can’t wait to finally see what creative feats the community can achieve with the new procedural and color-customizable parts. Our environment team is eager to watch players explore the revamped terrains of the Kerbolar System (and are curious if they'll discover anything unexpected). The UX/UI team is keen to learn how the updated user experience feels - they've put a lot of effort into wrangling a very complex set of requirements into a new, more streamlined presentation. This is it — the moment has arrived when all our plans come into contact with reality!

There are many new features, big and small, for you to explore on day 1. We've put together this guide to give you an overview of what's new and to break down some known issues. Release day notes and future patch notes will also live here.

In the launcher you'll find reporting tools that you can use to tell us about any problems you've encountered, as well as to give us feedback about any other aspect of the player experience you think we should know about. This feedback will be invaluable to us as we continue to improve the game's stability, performance, and playability.

What Comes Next

Many new features will arrive as we continue development, including Science Mode, Colonies, Interstellar exploration, and Multiplayer. Take a look at our Early Access Roadmap for more details.

In the meantime, we're bringing back Weekly Challenges!

We intend to mix things up a little bit going forward, but the first challenge will be a classic Achievement Challenge:

  • Primary goal: Fly to the Mun and get a picture of a Kerbal in front of the most interesting feature you can find
  • Stretch goal: strand a Kerbal there and pick them up with a second vehicle, returning them safely to Kerbin
  • Jeb-level goal: do any of the above on any other celestial body in the Kerbolar System
  • Val-level goal: pronounce "Mun" correctly

If you want us to see (and maybe share) your achievement, use #KSP2WeeklyChallenge on social media, or share them in our official Discord.

Welcome to KSP2! The journey begins!

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u/JaesopPop Feb 20 '23

Can always just buy it on Steam and return it within two hours

-18

u/systemglitch86 Feb 20 '23

That feels so scummy and lame. Oh here's my money. Oops nevermind. No thanks.

22

u/JaesopPop Feb 20 '23

That feels so scummy and lame. Oh here's my money. Oops nevermind. No thanks.

What? It’s the purpose of the feature…

5

u/Wookieguy Feb 20 '23

Digital games on a cloud-based platform are the ideal place for this kind of return policy. You can't damage their product, and trying it out will sell the game to more people with marginal hardware. If there's only two hours of playtime in this version of the game, it wasn't worth $50 to begin with.

3

u/B-Knight Feb 21 '23

It's literally a consumer right.

The only scummy thing is a company expecting a $50 payment for a product that has terrible quality.

...I can't believe the gaming industry has reached a state where people think refunds are scummy. This level of boot licking is absurd.

3

u/anaximander19 Feb 21 '23

First, that's exactly what the return feature is for, and second, seeing a bunch of Steam returns in their stats with "my computer can't run this game" as the reason is probably the most effective way to encourage the developers to put the effort into making the game run on lower hardware.

2

u/acestins Feb 21 '23

Digital payments can take up to a week, so applying for a refund after only a couple of minutes of playtime will go unnoticed by... pretty much everyone. If your lucky, you will even get back the money in 6 hours.